


That Never Guarded a Heart

by Hlessi



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Break Up, Character Study?, Communication Failure, Cultural Differences, Guilt, M/M, Politics, this is more of an experiment than anything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 02:18:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2331560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hlessi/pseuds/Hlessi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd heard that Dwarves loved only once. Either that was not true, or it had never been love between them. He did not know which would be worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Never Guarded a Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This is relevant to a couple of prompts on the Hobbit Kink Meme, which I will post as soon as I've made up my mind.
> 
> Come berate and abuse me at [bilboisms.tumblr.com](http://bilboisms.tumblr.com)!

There seemed little enough left to say.

Bilbo gazed down into his tea. It brewed well enough for being done in the metal cap off of a broken helm. The leaves that Thranduil had sent him hadn't included a teapot. He probably hadn't thought of it. There was a pointed difference, Bilbo was discovering, between the Elves of Rivendell and the Elves of Mirkwood, and much of what Bilbo felt of it was in terms of the hospitality. Elrond had been exceedingly gracious in his lofty way, very solicitous, but Thranduil was a different kettle entirely—while he could be kind, it was only as the weather was sometimes kind, and he had no eye for detail. So Bilbo brewed his marvellous tea in a piece of metal that had, he hoped, been broken off in an accident rather than struck violently off the head of some poor Dwarf. He'd scrubbed it as well as he could.

At least he had a cup. The wrong sort of cup, naturally, for it seemed that neither Dwarves nor Men were drinkers of tea, but it was better than sipping from a, a _dish_ , or a bit of armour, or some other such. Bofur and Bifur had offered to carve him a few cups, but he'd explained why that wouldn't be much good. Then Gloin had offered to bang out a nice copper service just as soon as he had a few spare moments, and Bilbo had been suitably grateful. His mouth watered at the thought of tea that didn't hint at stale mead.

“Master Baggins?”

_Ah,_ thought Bilbo, _here it is already. Master Baggins. As if I were the neighbour come round without even a by-your-leave._ It hurt him, but he would not show it. He was, as he'd just been reminded, a Baggins. And no Took would give anyone the satisfaction.

“Oh, sorry,” said Bilbo, eyes still in his cup, “I was miles away. Was there anything else?”

There was a surprised tone to the silence that followed. As if there'd been something more expected—as if he were supposed to fall to the floor weeping, as if he were meant to be going to pieces. Which only went to prove, Bilbo thought rather bitterly, that Dwarves really did not know anything about hobbits, despite a year spent in close company with one.

“No,” came the answer, finally, in a heavy voice. “No, I have said what I came here to say.” Another silence, short and tense. Then, awkwardly, even _haltingly_ , “I would have you know, Master Baggins, that you always have a place here—”

_Mad Dwarf,_ Bilbo thought into his tea. _Lying Dwarf._ As if there could be anything now but distance and pity. He would have expected a Dwarf to understand. He supposed that hobbits didn't really know anything about Dwarves, either.

He didn't hear the rest of what was being said, but suddenly he was being reached for, a hand coming toward him for his arm, or his own hand, or the living earth knew what. Bilbo did not lose his composure. He did not flinch, so much as he drew back—he receded from that hand, ebbed away from it without even looking up or seeming to notice. As if there were no hand, and his movement were a natural impulse.

The hand pulled back as if Bilbo bitten it.

“Well,” Bilbo said into his tea, before anything else embarrassing could happen, “thank you for coming, and do know that I am grateful for your being so direct. If there's nothing else, it _is_ getting late...”

He should have known better: what was rude for a hobbit was obviously not nearly firm enough for a Dwarf. The bloody man just went on sitting there, mouth closed and jaw working. Under other circumstances, Bilbo would have tried to soothe him, put a hand on his knee, spoken softly until some of the tension went out of those eyes. Alas, such gestures were now forever beyond him.

Abruptly, without much more warning than a harsh breath, “You will leave?”

At least it was a question. But Bilbo could not deny the unspeakable feeling it raised in him. He looked into his tea and recited elvish poetry in his head until things became manageable. There were no tears, which was a help, and if he'd gone pale, well, he'd been under the mountain for several days now. He obviously needed some fresh air.

“I shall have to think on it,” Bilbo finally said, murmuring just in case. He was pleased when his voice seemed quite steady to his ears.

There was a desperate sort of shifting, which Bilbo did not look up to see. “You must not...you must not think that you. Must.”

Bilbo would have laughed, if it wouldn't have been inappropriate and probably sounded very wretched. How had he ever been afraid of this blundering creature? Someone so thick, and so careless? Bilbo surprised himself by being annoyed at having managed to be caught out by someone so ill-bred. How one could be so well-born and yet so ill-mannered was a mystery for the Ages.

Then all his pain and his anger and even his irritation was watered down by a sadness so deep that it was all he could do not to droop under the weight. He thought: _He wants me gone. The sight of me embarrasses him, reminds him of his mistakes. He feels humiliated in front of his people, his new kingdom. Yet he can't bring himself to order me out, after all that has passed between us. He would be free of me, but he feels such guilt._

Bilbo suddenly and urgently wanted to be alone. “I shall think on it,” he repeated, his tone mild. Mild, and dismissing. _Go away._

And _still_ , the git just sat there. Clenching and unclenching his hands in his lap. Couldn't he see that he'd done what he'd come to do? One would think he'd escape at the first opportunity, if he were so uncomfortable.

Then it came to Bilbo, the answer. Why the Dwarf just wouldn't _leave_.

“I will, of course,” said Bilbo, “return your favours to you at once.”

He put down his cup. _Don't tremble,_ he told his fingers, and then, with his right thumb and forefinger, he pulled the ring off of his left ringfinger. It came easily, for he hadn't had time to get it properly sized.

He set it down on the table between them, just beside his teacap. Then he put one hand to his hair and stopped.

“I'm afraid it will take me some time to undo this,” said Bilbo. “I shall take it out tonight and have it to you by morning.”

If the Dwarf had died with his eyes open, Bilbo couldn't have known it he was so quiet. Bilbo didn't care. He was beyond manners. He was tired, and sad, and hurt, and he wanted to be alone so that he could be tired, sad, and hurt. He was still too much a hobbit to do so in front of a guest, but he was not stone. He was not a Dwarf.

He became aware that the Dwarf at his tea table was breathing heavily. _His wounds,_ thought Bilbo, and his heart leaped with worry before he remembered that it was no longer his place to worry. Others would have to do it, now. Or perhaps just one particular other, if that had already been decided.

“It really _is_ late,” declared Bilbo, and stood up. There, even a Dwarf ought to feel this.

The crackle of the fire filled the room. Bilbo was very calm; he felt every one of his fifty-one years. Weeping over the graves of one's parents did tend to inure one against weeping over anything else, and he'd spent his tears when he'd thought he'd lost his Dwarf, no, _the_ Dwarf to madness and death. Losing him to anything else was rather a comedown. Perhaps that meant Bilbo really was an old man, now, in his resigned middle age, on the other side of war and betrayal and death. Politics could only move him so much in comparison.

The Dwarf was standing up. He moved so slowly. Anger pricked at Bilbo's calm. Why did he have to dither? Why was this being dragged out so excruciatingly? What was the matter with him? Even if his wounds were paining him, Bilbo had been watching the stubborn Dwarf limp up and down the mountain to break his neck and work interminable hours for months. But _now_ he decided to be sluggish. It was perverse.

Then the Dwarf was finally on his feet, and he just stood there. Looking at Bilbo. What was _wrong_ with him? Could he really be so up himself that he was offended by Bilbo's presence of mind? Had he expected the silly hobbit to throw himself at those boots, to cling to him and plead with him not to leave? Had he wanted hysterics?

_He won't get them,_ Bilbo assured himself, _he'll never have that._ He would have had to have been something other than a hobbit, someone other than a Baggins and a Took, to weep into the knees of a Dwarf who had just cast him off. How little this Dwarf knew him, then. What strangers they were, after all.

There was a clink of metal. The ring was gone from the table.

“Good night,” said Bilbo, and did not move. The Dwarf could see himself out. It was his mountain, after all. He would know his way better than Bilbo ever would, now.

It took such a long time. Bilbo stood with his hands behind his back, looking into his cup of tea, trying to look as if he were thinking tea-thoughts. _Chin up and shoulders back, my lad,_ someone had once told him, his father or one of his Baggins uncles. Bilbo had never seen any of the men in his family cry, on either side. Nor the women, for that matter, though Gammer Took had, in her bad-tempered old age, reduced more than one young hobbit to whimpers, and he'd once seen his mother's eyes damp from laughter. Hobbits hoarded their griefs as Dwarves hoarded gold: they preferred to take it away somewhere no one was watching and go over it in private.

So to stay and gawk and refuse to take a hint when the Dwarf must know what a blow he'd just given Bilbo was quite possibly the worst thing he could have done. It was infuriating enough that Bilbo was angry, and such anger was a sweet balm; it held him upright, helped him mind himself when otherwise he might have broken and given the Dwarf what he wanted, when he might have fed the Dwarf's rotten pride. The urge to kneel down and beg was weakening his knees at every moment, but his head knew better. _You will regret it forever if you let him shame you now._

Finally, _finally_ , the Dwarf was moving. _Toward_ Bilbo. His voice was tight and breathless when he said, “Bilbo—”

Bilbo's skin turned to ice. “Good _night_ ,” he said again, his own voice polite and cool, and then he turned on his heel and passed through the carven stone arch that led to the bedchamber.

He regretted it immediately. _Coward,_ he hissed at himself, _he'll think you're running away._ But he could hardly stop now without looking like an utter fool, and so he continued on until the door latched shut behind him and he was standing in the dark because he hadn't brought a light with him. He stood, shaking with outrage, and he waited for his ears to tell him it would be safe to go back out for the fire.

Bilbo still wasn't crying. To be honest, he was a bit confounded by that—he'd been expecting to come undone the moment he was alone, but he still felt quite himself. Rather the tiredness had left him; he felt as if he had things to do. Late as the hour was, he couldn't possibly have lain down or slept.

The sitting room—or, at least, he'd been calling it his sitting room—was quiet. The exterior door had not opened or closed, he was certain, so the Dwarf was still there. Good grief, why wouldn't he just _go_. What did he _want_.

_Not you,_ a malicious little voice told him, and, ah, there it was, with an abruptness that stole the breath out of his lungs. The profound ache in his breast, as if a stone had lodged in his flesh and was pressing down on his heart. The bewildering hurt that he couldn't see or relieve.

_I've had this before,_ Bilbo reminded himself. _It will not kill me. It will pass._

Only—would it? Mum had told him all about the time she'd had her heart broken by Madog Brandybuck, usually with much good humour, but when Dad had died it had killed her. Was this the sort of heartbreak that would go away someday, or was it the sort that took a hobbit with it? How could one tell the difference?

The others of the Company had been avoiding him for days. He saw that now. He remembered Balin's careful expressions and Dwalin's new unwillingness to meet his eyes and Fili's and Kili's disappearances and Gloin's hasty leave-takings whenever they met and he saw them for what they were. Oin had been no different than usual, but he was deaf and generally uninterested in anything that wasn't some horrific injury and almost always the last to fall in line. He hadn't seen Bofur or Bifur or Bombur for weeks, or Nori, and Dori and Ori were so busy that he hadn't taken it to mean anything in particular that he hadn't spoken with them in nearly a month. But they were Dwarves, and surely knew what it looked like when a Dwarf was trying to extricate himself from an arrangement he'd made too hastily.

_Let it go,_ Bilbo told himself, and closed his eyes, which made no difference in this lightless place. _Let it go. They are his people. They are his kin. They are his friends first. You were always the outsider. Let it go. You cannot have expected more._

_They could have warned me,_ a pitiful small part of himself tried to protest. _They could have not let me do this alone._

But he knew that was irrational. This was a personal matter between two people, one of whom commanded the others' loyalty in a way that could not be questioned. It was childish to think that any of them should have taken his part. There had never been the possibility. He was alone. He had no friends here, not after this.

Was that Dwarf _still_ here? Bilbo put his head against the door, ear open. _Leave, leave, leave,_ Bilbo urged. He never should have retreated. He may not be a Dwarf, and this may not be his mountain, but he had been given these quarters for his use and he had a right to expect some consideration. He ought to have seen the Dwarf to the door with his head held high. Yet he hadn't, and now he was trapped, waiting for the Dwarf to decide to go on his own. He was so stupid.

Or perhaps these quarters _were_ the problem. Bilbo could not see in such darkness, the darkness beneath a mountain that was worse than anything in Mirkwood, but he could close his eyes and see every part of these rooms. Rich rooms, royal rooms, rooms that he'd been told had once belonged to a queen. The ceiling of sapphires and pearls, and the hot, sulphurous water piped to fill a bath carved from a single block of basalt. Perhaps he was meant to be quit of these rooms. Perhaps that was what the Dwarf had been about to tell him, that these were no longer his rooms, that he was meant to be moving to lesser, more distant chambers somewhere else.

Well. So be it. He knew very well that this was not his place any more, but if that Dwarf thought Bilbo would be tossed out in the middle of the night, he was mistaken. Bilbo would walk out on his own two feet at a civilized hour like a civilized person.

_I should have known,_ something wailed inside Bilbo, _I should have seen. How could I not see._ Because as he stood there, all the little signs and portents of the last few weeks were flooding his mind. The distractedness, the missed meals, the excuses of work, the growing distance. The silences between them that Bilbo could not overcome. That frown with which the Dwarf had watched him sometimes, when he thought Bilbo's attention was elsewhere, that expression which Bilbo had told himself was a headache but which he now recognized as resentment. The reserve with which he'd endured—endured!—Bilbo's touches, his kiss, before he'd begun avoiding them entirely.

_No,_ thought Bilbo urgently, _I can't. I can't I can't I can't._ He couldn't do this now. He couldn't sink below the surface _now_. There was too much to be done, too far to go. He wasn't safe. He had to go home.

_Home,_ he told himself, and there was a relief and a resolve and a _yearning_ to the thought that helped push back the dark cloud he hadn't known was descending. Yes, he would go home. Home to the Shire, home to Hobbiton, home to Bag End where no one could tell him to leave or revoke his privileges. Where he was not the intruder, the one from whom secrets must be kept, the one who was expendable. He would go home.

Bilbo had never stopped missing his home. The mountain was difficult to love, with its sharp edges and sharp precipices and the airless dark. He had been prepared to try for his love, for his friends, and without them the mountain became just one more point on the map, a gloomy and forbidding place that he was glad to have seen—or would be—but was not home. At least this meant that he would not have to try any more. At least there was that.

From the sitting room, Bilbo heard a heavy golden door open and, after an intolerable delay, close.

His shoulders slumped. Then he straightened them again. His eyes and throat were hot with tears, but he swallowed them down. _Not now, not now._

After the unlit bedchamber, the sitting room was bright enough to hurt. The tea was cold, but he gulped what was left of his down before emptying the teacap and then leaving it stacked, with his two cups, on the tea table by the hearth. Then he took some fire and went back into the bedchamber.

His possession were very few—nearly everything in these apartments had been given to him recently, and he did not feel that they were really his. A few heavy coats, leather and wool, hung in the wardrobe, but he would not take those; he preferred the blue coat that the Lake-men had given him. Nor did he want the silver comb, or the cunning little knife and spoon with the pearled handles, or the white clay pipe shaped like a thrush in flight. They weren't his. Not really.

But the blue coat, which he pulled from the locking chest at the foot of the bed, this was his. As was the sword, Sting, which he had wrapped in his coat. He would take these.

Then only the mithril coat was left.

Bilbo did not even consider taking it. It was not his. Had never, it seemed, been his.

Closing the chest, leaving the key in its lock, Bilbo took account of himself. His own clothes, washed only the night before. The blue coat, thick and warm. Sting, with its belt. And his ring, which was in his waistcoat pocket. That was everything he had.

Bilbo's hand went to his hair.

The braid was a nightmare. More than once, Bilbo was provoked enough to reach for Sting—he would cut the offending hair off and be done with it. But, more than once, he took his hand away again and worked at the braid patiently. He was sick of losing parts of himself to Dwarves. He wouldn't give them more than they already had, more than they'd already thrown away. He wouldn't waste any more of himself.

At last, when his hair was again loose and soft over his ear, the bead gleaming promisingly on the table—and who would that go to now, who would braid that into their hair next—Bilbo belted on his sword, took up his ring, and left Erebor.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Lethe" by Charles Baudelaire, trans. William Aggeler.


End file.
